Big History Show at St George’s Hall – Sept 14 to 16

LIVERPOOL is getting ready for the city’s largest ever historical celebration.

The Big History Show arrives at St George’s Hall on Friday, September 14 for a packed weekend of heritage-themed activity; combining a major academic conference with a massive local history exhibition.

Nearly 100 cultural heritage organisations from across Merseyside will be taking stands at the exhibition – including family history groups, museums and historical societies.

There’s also a chance to catch a series of talks from local experts including Liverpool’s Community Historian Steve Binns and BBC Radio Merseyside’s Frank Carlyle.

And on Saturday at 1pm, legendary Liverpool-born poet Roger McGough will give the first public reading of extracts from ‘The Liverpool Saga’ – an 800 line poem to mark 800 years of Liverpool history. Although Roger wrote the opening and closing sections of the poem, the remainder is made-up entirely of contributions from local people. More than 500 people submitted a staggering 3,000 lines of verse to be included in the saga, which was then whittled down to the final version by local poets Sylvia Hikens and Dave Ward.